Waiting in Transit -Snapshots

---

I saw a documentary once about endurance racing. Teams would race for four days without sleep. Usually on the third night team members would suffer from SSD attacks (severe sleep deprivation). They would become totally disorientated and begin acting is if they were intoxicated. The racers called it bonking:


11:00 p.m. - We arrive back at the airport from a long day of bartering and sweating. We have thirteen hours before our flight to Sydney and were both starting to feel a little strange.

11:30 p.m. - K.F.C.

12:00 a.m. - We find a couple of benches to sleep on, but a little boy thinks it’s funny to hit the dirty looking ‘guai lou’ with his comic book. His family enjoys the show.

12:15 a.m. - At the bookshop for some reading.

12:30 -on I’ve lost my page. I can’t recall where I am or what I’m doing. Julian is gallivanting through the airport, with arms out stretched, making plane noises. I don’t know if I’m doing the same. The following hours are a mystery. At best I remember snapshots; a montage of smells, colors and people. Movin Melvin Brown tap dances on a cobblestone path; lines of green sugar cane wait, ready for the chop; incense burns as worshippers kneel for Christ, Muhammad or Buddha; beggars cut their legs for pity; a man roasts chestnuts over an open fire; a girl paints a masterpiece with spray cans; graffiti covers the trains; uniformed ladies drive trolleys along isles. I witness expressions and hear tongues. A blur of sights and trials have stampeded passed me, I am left in their wake, trying to remember.

I wake up on the plane thirty minutes before landing in Sydney. We transfer at Sydney and I sleep my way to Auckland. Security spends an hour checking us thoroughly -apparently two young grubby boys who travel to the other side of the world, and stay for only four days is suspicious. We have three short days to prepare for our second trip -thirty-two flights through Asia, Europe and the USA.

---